Sweet Play of the Day - October 21

Yeah, I know, it was three days ago, but I didn't see it until today.

Craig Calcaterra at Hardball Talk: "That was the best play by anyone from Kansas City in Game 1, to be honest."

More Umpire Controversy in the National League Playoffs

On Saturday, as I noted yesterday, the Nationals had complaints about the strike zone called by home plate umpire Vic Carapazza in their 18-inning 2-1 loss to San Francisco. Those complaints seemed to be justified, with calls going against the Nationals and not the Giants. 

Yesterday's Dodgers-Cardinals game, which St. Louis won 3-1 to take a 2-1 lead in their best-of-five series, featured more of the same, with the Dodgers, particularly right fielder Matt Kemp, taking issue with the balls-and-strikes calls of home plate umpire Dale Scott. Craig Calcaterra of Hardball Talk doesn't see it, and I'm inclined to agree.

Here's the strike zone that Scott called against left-handed hitters. Red is called strikes, green is called balls. Squares are calls when St. Louis batters were at the plate, triangles are Los Angeles at bats.
        

The solid square is the regulation strike zone, and the dashed square is the typically called strike zone. The calls here aren't bad. Yes, Scott called outside pitches strikes, but that's typical. The Dodgers got strikes called on a couple pitches that were high, but the Cards had a couple bad calls too. No bias that I can see.

Now, against right-handed hitters, like Kemp:
        

This is from the catcher's perspective, so the batter's standing to the left. That's a pretty wide strike zone. I'm counting seven pitches called strikes that were outside the typical right handed batter's strike zone, and three more that were outside the rulebook strike zone. But biased? Three of those seven obviously outside strike calls went against the Dodgers, four against the Cards. Of the three that were outside the de jure strike zone but within the de facto zone, one was called against a Dodger and two against a Cardinal. (Note: My counts may be off, since there may be some pitches that are right on top of each other.) Scott had a wide strike zone, but it appears to have been equally wide for both teams.

All these charts come from Brooks Baseball, which totally rocks.

Today, Clayton Kershaw is going to start for the Dodgers. He's the obvious National League Cy Young Award winner and probably the MVP as well, and he's being called upon to stave off elimination for Los Angeles. There are two things about Kershaw that you'll hear:

1. He has struggled against St. Louis. Friday he gave up eight runs in 6.2 innings, getting the lost. He also lost both his starts against the Cardinals in last year's NLCS, pitching well in Game 2 (six innings, three baserunners, one unearned run) and badly in Game 6 (seven runs in four innings). In between last year's NLCS and this year's DS, though, he faced the Cards twice and allowed just three runs in 14 innings (1.93 ERA), striking out 21 and walking just three, and over his career he's got a 3.46 ERA and 1.27 WHIP against St. Louis, which is bad only from the perspective of Clayton Kershaw. Russell Carleton at Baseball Prospectus has a good takedown of the Cardinals-own-Kershaw meme.
2. He's going to start on three days' rest. That's very unusual in these days of five-man rotations. The only time in his career he's done it, in fact, is in last year's Divisional Series against Atlanta. It worked out OK: six innings, three baserunners, six strikeouts, two unearned runs. 

Flyover: Minnesota Twins

When I started this series last month, my intent was to review each team's performance over the past 30 days, alphabetically. I got through Arizona, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, the Cubs, and Cleveland before I realized that I was going to run out of time and that it'd be more timely to focus on the teams that are in contention for postseason play. That's what I've done next, hopscotching among the Tigers, Brewers, A's, Angels, Cardinals, Pirates, Dodgers, and Giants. Let's take a day off from good teams, though, and instead discuss one of the most interesting teams of the year: The Minnesota Twins.

How Are They Doing Lately? Terrible. The Twins are 8-19 over the last 30 days, the worst record in the American League, and tied with the Diamondbacks for the worst record in the league. That's a 114-loss pace over a full season.

So why write about them? Well, put it this way: After the Tommy John surgery epidemic, replay, and that Yankee shortstop retiring, what's the biggest story this year? The decline of offense. Teams are scoring an average of 4.08 runs per game this year. That's the lowest average since 1980. and a run per game down from the highs of 1999 (5.08) and 2000 (5.14). 

Take the American League. Since the All-Star Game, American League games are featuring 8.05 runs per game, scoring 4.06 runs and allowing 3.99. (The discrepancy is due to interleague games.) But if you exclude the Twins from the total, that figure drops to 7.91 runs per game, 4.03 scored and 3.88 allowed. Twins games have featured 10.02 runs! How's this: The last time the American League averaged less than eight runs per game, as it's done excluding the Twins since the All-Star break, it was 1972, and the league responded by instituting the designated hitter. The last time the league averaged 10.02 runs per game, as the Twins have since the All-Star break, the league batted .276 and Pedro Martinez was the only pitcher with an ERA below 3.70; this year the Tigers are the only team batting above .276 (by .001), the league ERA is 3.83, and there are 24 pitchers with ERAs below 3.70. The Twins have been a throwback to the Steroid Era!

Actually, the pitchers have been more throwbacks than the hitters of late. Over the past 30 days, the Twins are scoring 4.3 runs per game, fifth in the league, while giving up 6.1. No other team has allowed more than 4.7 runs per game.

What's Going Right? The Twins are batting .263 over the past 30 days, fourth in the league, with a fifth-best .399 slugging percentage and a sixth-best .316 on base percentage. Their .329 batting average on balls in play, compared to a league average of .297, indicates that they've probably been a little lucky, since wide deviations don't usually persist. They strike out a lot (23% of plate appearances, third in the league), but their walk rate, 6.8% of plate appearances, isn't much off from the league average of 7.2%. sixth;hey'be been good at getting on base (.284 batting average, .336 on base percentage, both second in the league) over the past 30 days. Their .421 slugging percentage is fifth, as they've hit only 20 homers, which is tenth in the NL. Their batting average on balls in play is .330 compared to a league average of .303, suggesting that their batting average and on base percentage have been a little lucky, but only 7.5% of their fly balls have gone over the fence compared to a league average of 9.6%, suggesting that their slugging percentage and home run totals have been a little unlucky. The Giants have been the toughest team in the NL to fan, striking out in only 17% of plate appearances compared to a league average of 21%. They've had problems with their bullpen, as I'll explain below, but the starters have been best in the league at getting hitters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone (33%), they've struck out the most batters (23% of batters), and walked the fourth fewest (6%).

What's Going Wrong? The Twins pitchers have been remarkably consistent over the past 30 days: 5.78 ERA overall, worst in the league; 5.78 starters' ERA, worst in the league; 5.77 relievers' ERA, worst in the league. You know the On The Field Of Play pitching mantra, It's good to throw strikes, but it's better to get strikes? As it turns out, the Twins have been pretty good at throwing strikes (51% of pitches in the strikes zone, third most in the league) and getting strikes (batters swinging at 32% of pitches outside the striek zone, fourth highest in the league). So why haven't they been successful? Because the pitches they've thrown, inside and outside the strike zone, have been hittable. Twins pitchers have the third-slowest fastball in the league (91.6 mph average), the third-slowest slider (83.0 mph average). They've allowed the highest batting average on balls in play (.334, league average is .293), the second highest percentage of fly balls going over the fence (11.7%, league average is 9.2%), and the most baserunners to score (35%, league average is 27%). Those three figures, widely different from the league averages, probably indicate some bad luck, but that's not all of it. You throw hittable pitches, you get hit.

This shouldn't be blamed exclusively on the pitchers, though. The Twins fielders have converted 67% of balls in play into outs this year, the lowest percentage in the league, and the team does poorly in advanced defensive measures. 

Who's Hot? The Twins have managed to compile those awful pitching numbers despite having Phil Hughes, who'll get a few Cy Young Award votes. Over the past 30 days, he has a 3.44 ERA to go with 33 strikeouts and just one walk over 36.2 innings. His strikeout to walk ratio is 11.3, which is the highest in baseball history, topping Brett Saberhagen's 11.0 in 1994 and Cliff Lee's 10.3 in 2010. (h/t: D.J. Short at Hardball Talk) He's making me look smart when I wrote in December

Hughes isn't an elite pitcher. But he's probably better than what he was last year, and the move out of the Bronx should help him keep more balls in the park. By the end of the year, I wouldn't be surprised if his numbers were better than league average.

Actually, that isn't all that smart, because he's been a lot better than league average, 21st in ERA, eighth in WHIP, and a 15-10 record for a team that's won 61% of the games that he's started (99-63 pace) but only 38% of games started by others (61-101 pace). 

The Twins also acquired Ricky Nolasco over the winter, and while he's been OK over the past 30 days (3.93 ERA), he's been a disappointment, going 5-12 with a 4.29 ERA, making me look not-so-smart when I wrote back in November

I'd expect an average or slightly better-than-average ERA and 200 or so innings, but nothing spectacular.

The league ERA 3.83 and Nolasco's pitched 153 innings.

No hitter has been really outstanding, though rookie centerfielder Danny Santana has hit .290 and is seven-for-eight as a basestealer over the past 30 days.

Who's Not? Rather than name names, let's just say that Twins starters not named Hughes or Nolasco have an 8.00 ERA over the past 30 days, giving up more homers in their 77.2 innings pitched (16) than the Indians (15), Padres (15), Rangers (13), Royals (12), Braves (11), and Diamondbacks (11) have hit. No reliever has been particularly good, and closer Glen Perkins had more blown saves (three) than saves (two) and more than twice as many home runs allowed (five) than strikeouts (two) to go with a 12.27 ERA before revealing a season-ending nerve injury. 

Rookie DH Kennys Vargas leads the team with five homers and 15 RBI over the past 30 days, but otherwise has looked kind of lost at the plate, striking out in 29% of his plate appearances (the league average is less than 21%) and failing to draw a single walk. Rookie right fielder Oswaldo Arcia is batting .228 with an even higher strikeout rate than Vargas's, 32%. 
  
What's the Outlook? You'll note that every hitter I mentioned is a rookie. The Twins also have two of the most highly-rated prospects in the game, consensus No. 1 Byron Buxton, an outfielder, and third baseman Miguel Sano. Sano is 21 and Buxton's 20, and they both missed all (Sano) or almost all (Buxton) of the 2014 season with injuries, so they won't be headed up to Minnesota until sometime next year at the earliest. But there are bats on the way.

The pitching this year has been terrible, of course, but there are plenty of young arms in the farm as well. I could see the Twins being an exciting team at the plate in coming years, but my jury's still out on the pitching staff. The Twins have had a pitch-to-contact focus in recent years, while the rest of the league's gone for strikeouts. The idea is that the Twins's approach holds down pitch counts, preserving pitchers' arms, and lets the players in the field turn batted balls into outs. Well, it hasn't worked. The fielders aren't that great, and the Twins will finish the season with by far the lowest strikeout rate in the league (16.5% of plate appearances, league average is 20.1%). They were last, by far, in 2013, 2012, and 2011 as well. They weren't in 2010, which is also the last time they played in the postseason. I've heard Twins fans called for manager Ron Gardenhire's head, as this will be the team's third last place finish in the past four years, but it seems to me that someone in player development--specifically, pitcher development--is more to blame. The Twins aren't drafting, or aren't developing, or both, the type of pitchers who are successful in contemporary baseball. The Twins have used 23 pitchers this year, and the only ones with above-average strikeout rates are Hughes, Perkins, and 27-year-old rookie Aaron Thompson, who's pitched only 6.1 innings. Until the Twins embrace Ks for their hurlers, it's hard to see them competing, even in the generally weak American League Central. But their efforts to single-handedly keep run production across the league alive, I suppose, is admirable.

...And That's Why, 10 Years Later, ESPN and FOX Show Only Yankees-Red Sox Games

Big hat tip to Craig Calcaterra at Hardball Talk for realizing the significance of this date. Take it away, Craig: 

On July 24, 2004, the Yankees were cruising. They had an eight and a half game lead over the Red Sox, who were tied with the Twins for the wild card. They beat the Red Sox 8-7 the night before. A month before that they swept Boston in the Bronx. On this Saturday, New York was up again, 3-0 in the top of the third when Alex Rodriguez stepped up to the plate to face Bronson Arroyo.

 A-Rod wasn’t yet the pariah he would become. Yes, a lot of people hated that he made the money that he made, but he had yet to be implicated in the PED story. He had yet to be caught cheating on his wife and dating pop stars. He had yet to strike narcissistic poses in glossy magazines and be on the outs publicly with his team. He was merely the best player in the game at that point who had maybe-a-bit-too-publicly forced a trade to a contender the previous winter. But heck, the Red Sox were actually the front-runners for him. Even struck a deal with Texas to acquire him, only to see it nixed by the union because A-Rod –selflessly! — had offered to rework his contract to make it happen.

But A-Rod had driven in the go-ahead run in the ninth inning of the Yankees victory the previous night and the Sox were a tad frustrated.  Then this happened:

It was a pretty good brawl as far as these things go. Not the half-hearted shoving you typically see these days. But it wasn’t a terribly special brawl. We’ve seen this sort of thing before. Sometimes we see them with more haymakers. But one thing did make this brawl special. This picture:

I link to the entire Hardball Talk piece at the top of this. (And I'm no lip reader, but is Rodriguez repeatedly shout "vacuum" to Varitek? Home plate must've been messy or something.)

Rodriguez and Varitek were both ejected, and the Red Sox won a wild game, 11-10. Of course, this was the year the Red Sox came back from a 3-0 deficit to the Yankees in the American League Championship Series and won their first World Series since the War of 1812 or something.

But more significantly, July 24, 2004 firmly established a Yankees-Red Sox narrative, a cultural marker that we're still stuck with, ten years later, when almost everybody on both of those teams is out of baseball (the only players still with the two clubs are Derek Jeter, David Ortiz, and, of course, Rodriguez), and neither team is particularly good. It's come to define baseball rivalries, and the networks show clips of the brawl when they do their endless promos for their endless series of Boston-New York televised games.

Kind of Sweet Play of the Day, July 20

Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo made a circus catch in yesterday's game against the Diamondbacks with runners on first and third and one out.

And it cost the Cubs a run, and possibly the game.

Here's the play:

The problem, as Hardball Talk pointed out, is a little-known rule in baseball, rule 7.04(c), which states: 

If a fielder, after having made a legal catch, should fall into a stand or among spectators or into the dugout or any other out-of-play area while in possession of the ball after making a legal catch, or fall while in the dugout after making a legal catch, the ball is dead and each runner shall advance one base, without liability to be put out, from his last legally touched base at the time the fielder fell into, or in, such out-of-play area.

(highlighting mine)

So by catching the ball while falling out of play, Rizzo allowed the run to score. Had he let the ball drop foul, there still would have been runners on first and third, nobody out, 0-1 count on the batter. So there's still a pretty good chance the Diamondbacks would have scored a run. (To date this season, teams have scored 1.67 runs in innings in which they had runners on first and third with nobody out.) But they might not have. And that one run was the margin of victory in a 3-2 win for Arizona.

Why Guys Have Troubles With Commitments

First baseman/DH Albert Pujols signed a ten-year, $240 million contract with the Angels after the 2011 season. The contract's back-loaded, paying Pujols $12 million in 2012, $16 million last year, $23 million this season, and $1 million more every year from 2015 to 2021. In 2021, he will be a 41-year-old making $30 million.

First point: If Pujols were to stop playing today, he'd be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Or at least he should be. He has the seventh-highest slugging percentage (.597), the eighth-highest on-base plus slugging (exactly 1.000), and the 25th-most homers (508) of all time.

Second point: The contract hasn't worked out that well. Here are Pujols's numbers starting in his last of three MVP seasons, 2009:

Year	Tm	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
2009 ★	STL	160	568	124	186	45	1	47	135	16	4	115	64	.327	.443	.658	1.101	189
2010 ★	STL	159	587	115	183	39	1	42	118	14	4	103	76	.312	.414	.596	1.011	173
2011	STL	147	579	105	173	29	0	37	99	9	1	61	58	.299	.366	.541	.906	148
2012	LAA	154	607	85	173	50	0	30	105	8	1	52	76	.285	.343	.516	.859	138
2013	LAA	99	391	49	101	19	0	17	64	1	1	40	55	.258	.330	.437	.767	116
2014	LAA	72	290	40	74	16	0	16	44	2	0	23	36	.255	.315	.476	.791	123

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/23/2014.

That's not pretty. 

Today at Hardball Talk, Aaron Gleeman noted:

Pujols’ power has remained strong throughout his overall struggles and his 16 home runs rank eighth among AL hitters, but that comes with a lowly .255 batting average and .315 on-base percentage. And after a decade of walking more often than he struck out for the Cardinals he’s whiffed 36 times compared to just 23 walks in 72 total games.
He’s been better than he was last season, but just barely, and overall Pujols looks nothing like the all-time great hitter he was in St. Louis. Sadly it was just a hot start for a banged-up 34-year-old with another seven seasons and $189 million left on his contract.

Insult to injury: Which of these two first basemen would you want?

	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	TB
Player A	325	305	30	91	23	3	7	32	2	1	13	60	.298	.326	.462	.788	141
Player B	334	304	42	77	19	1	13	44	2	1	24	45	.253	.309	.451	.760	137

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Generated 6/23/2014.

Player B has gone deep more, but has a markedly lower batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage. So we can reasonably expect that Player B's superior runs scored and driven in are a function of where he bats in the order than a reflection of skill, since Player A is pretty clearly the better hitter. Here's another stat: Adjusted for home park, Player A's on base plus slugging (OPS) is 29% better than average this year. Player B's is only 3% better.

Player A is St. Louis Cardinal first basemen this season. Player B is Los Angeles Angel first basemen this season. Primary Cardinals 1B Matt Adams is making $22,484,000 less than the primary Angels 1B this season.

Dillon Gee, Cy Young Contender

Nice research by Aaron Gleeman over at Hardball Talk - since last May 30, the Mets' Dillon Gee (for those of you who aren't Mets fans or fantasy players - he's a righthanded starting pitcher) has the fifth best ERA in the majors. Here's the article. Here's the key quote:

Check out where his 2.66 ERA ranks among all MLB pitchers with at least 20 starts during that nearly year-long span:
     Jose Fernandez    1.56
    Clayton Kershaw   1.89
    Zack Greinke      2.29
    Max Scherzer      2.53
    Dillon Gee        2.66

The two obvious reactions: (1) Dillon Gee, huh? (2) Man, that Jose Fernandez.

Sweet Play of the Day - May 2

Found out about this one via Hardball Talk. It's a college game. LSU (in purple) is the visiting team, leading 4-0 in the ninth inning. Texas A&M, the home team, rallies to tie the game in the last of the ninth and has the bases loaded with two outs. A&M shortstop Blake Allemand hits a screaming drive down the left field line, LSU left fielder Jared Foster in pursuit, for the apparent game-winner.



LSU won it in the tenth, 5-4.

It Doesn't Get Any Easier

I've stated my dislike for Hall of Fame rhetoric. So I'll limit myself to this: As Hardball Talk points out, next year's ballot has, for the first time, two pitchers who look like slam dunks (Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson), one seeming no-brainer (John Smoltz), plus several other guys who'll get votes. The worthy candidates who missed this time (Biggio, Piazza, Bagwell, Raines, Schilling, E Martinez, Trammell, Mussina - and I'm not including the hitter and the pitcher who'd blow up the comments section) won't have an easy go next year, either. 

The Best Craig Biggio Promotional Video Ever

Via Hardball Talk. If 3,060 hits (21st most all time), 668 doubles (fifth), 1,844 runs (15th), and 7 All-Star teams aren't enough:

The Replay We Won't Get

The Washington Nationals are making a frantic bid to qualify for the playoffs. After entering the season as a division favorite, they've been looking up at the Braves all year. Now, they're the hottest team in the NL over the past 30 days, and enter today's play 5.5 games behind the Reds for the last wild card spot.

But it could've been 4.5 back. As Hardball Talk shows here, with embedded video, Washington's Wilson Ramos was called out on strikes for the last out of the seventh inning, trailing 5-4 with the tying runner on base. Ramos was called out on what was clearly a ball. Here is the Brooks Baseball chart of the at bat:

The third strike is pitch number 7. It's not as bad a call as the video suggests, but still, the inning ended on a ball being called a strike with the tying run on third in a game the Nats would lose by a run. 

The point here isn't whether the Nationals would've won if the count on Ramos would've gone to 2-2 instead of strike three. The point is about replay. As you probably know, there will be expanded instant replay in the 2014 season. All manner of calls can be challenged and, if replay indicates an error, overturned. Balls and strikes, though, are specifically excluded.

The logic is that if managers could challenge every close ball/strike call, games would last forever. But my question is: Why challenge? Several years ago, major league baseball installed cameras at every stadium that record the speed and movement of every pitch, as well as where they cross the plate. That system, called Pitch F/X, is what feeds Brooks Baseball as well as those graphs you see during TV broadcasts or when watching a game on mlb.com, espn.com, or At Bat 13. The point is: Every pitch is being recorded as it crosses the plate. Why do we need an umpire to call it a ball or strike? We already have the information we need to make the call. Why allow somebody to potentially screw it up?

People call this "robot umpires." It'd be a pretty radical departure to not have the ump behind the plate calling strikes and balls. But if baseball is willing to accept the imperfect solution of challenging balls in play, which will necessitate time-consuming reviews that may not, given the limited number of camera angles, provide a clear answer, why won't baseball consider automating ball-and-strike calls, where we have the technology to do it now, better than any umpire?

And think of how baseball history might have changed if we had Pitch F/X and robot umpires 125 years ago (literally - it was chronicled in 1888) and one of those strikes called on Casey had, in fact, been a ball, as ten thousand eyes believed that fateful day in Mudville.